10 ms·

Self-Driving Electric Cars Will Dominate Roads by 2030

23 points by edward 10y ago

Animats 10y ago
Self-driving cars, yes. Car-sharing, probably not. There are many car rental schemes now, but they're a niche market. Zipcar is not going to take over the world.
- j2bax 10y ago
  Self driving vehicles will make this a lot more accessible since the car can essentially operate like Uber without a driver. Hail a car via App (or schedule) the car picks you up and drops you off where you need to go, and then its on its way to pick up the next person. It doesn't require a human to park the car or find the car to pick it up. Far fewer cars will be needed to move people around efficiently, if all the cars aren't parked at offices all day long and at your home in the evening. If there are just enough cars that you never have to wait more than 1-5 minutes to get a pickup, and its significantly cheaper to share I could definitely see a lot of people forgoing ownership.
  - ams6110 10y ago
    Why would you car-share and not just hail a ride when you need one? EVs can't do long road trips so owning one for the occasional vacation isn't much benefit; you'll likely need to rent a gasoline-powered car anyway.
    - marz0 10y ago
      > EVs can't do long road trips It's possible that a car-share would set up a system where you can swap out the battery of the car at a stop and continue driving; similar to stopping at a gas station.
      - ensignavenger 10y ago
        Or even swap cars at a stop if necessary. But long distance travel is getting better all the time in EVs, by 2030, it may not be a big deal to find a charger and get a quick charge every so often.
      - aetherson 10y ago
        Yes, though it's an additional design constraint in the already-heavily-design-constrained space of EVs. Whether it will happen will probably depend heavily on a host of surrounding factors about how much EV technology increases and how much of the transportation market share rides-for-hire increases to.
    - falcor84 10y ago
      >EVs can't do long trips The new Tesla can do 335 miles [0]. That's quite enough for a day's journey in my opinion. [0] http://fortune.com/2017/01/22/tesla-long-range-electric-car/ http://fortune.com/2017/01/22/tesla-long-range-electric-car/
      - YSFEJ4SWJUVU6 10y ago
        Under ideal – and often somewhat uncomfortable – conditions, perhaps. Anyway, range anxiety is a real thing, and 335 miles won't cut it unless you can charge it like you can fill up a traditional car (which you can't do), although 335 miles sure takes a lot more time when driving at a speed that Tesla gets it without a recharge.
      - maxerickson 10y ago
        It's plenty long enough to be stuck in a car but kind of a bummer to have 100 miles left.
      - ams6110 10y ago
        My limit is more like 700 miles. I'll easily drive 12 or 14 hours with only fuel stops. I used to do 1,000 miles to Florida non stop for spring break. I don't do that anymore but know people who do.
    - Gustomaximus 10y ago
      What about faster charge tech? While infrastructure and technology improve, people will likely time breaks like lunch around charge when doing these kind of trips. E.g 350 kms in the morning, have a 90% charge over lunch. Another 300kms. Have a 15 min coffee for an extra 50% charge that takes you through to dinner charge if you want to keep going. Thats a bunch of kms. And batteries/range will probably be even better than that 10 years from now.
  - Animats 10y ago
    "Due to high traffic volume, your car will arrive in 92 minutes. Would you like to upgrade to Premium Service?"
- KevanM 10y ago
  I don't know - why do you need to own a car 100% of the time? Why not have a car drive to pick you up for your commute maybe with someone else heading your way - then it goes about and picks up people who are heading to the shops, have doctor's appointments, are heading to the airport. You might even part-own that car - you get priority on your travelling hours - and the lease company does a daily valet before the car comes to pick you up.
  - wtvanhest 10y ago
    Everyone basically needs their cars at the same time. They all need them to commute. Not owning one will mean ride sharing or extremely high prices. My guess is that people will continue owning their cars forever.
  - takk309 10y ago
    An example for full time ownership is chaining trips together. If I am planning to go to multiple stores over the course of the day (one before work, two at lunch, and one after), I don't want to have to load and unload my purchases each time I have to get a different car. Or if I plan to do an activity after work that requires lots of equipment home is not along the way, I will bring the gear with and leave it in my car for the day. These are just two examples from my own life but I am sure there are other reasons to own a private car.
    - chii 10y ago
      It could be a time based rental, rather than trip based. If you think you'll need it for several trips, you should have the option to do that, rather than having to swap cars between trips.
      - aetherson 10y ago
        To the extent that that's cheap, you'll see the utilization of the rental cars go down. To the extent that it's not cheap, why are people using this service? There is some kind of happy-ish medium there, but it's another chip away at the claims of the omnipresence of rides-for-hire.
- takk309 10y ago
  I think car sharing will be very regional. Areas that are rural will not see the same level of car sharing as urban areas. Many rural people are too used to the freedom of personal car ownership to give it up.
  - aetherson 10y ago
    And, you know, they don't work as well in lower-population-density places.
- incompatible 10y ago
  Much of the cost of renting a car now is insurance. If the car can drive itself, it could be quite a bit cheaper.
  - chii 10y ago
    Why would the insurance change, unless you're assuming the self driving car is much safer?
    - incompatible 10y ago
      Yeah, I'm assuming the self driving car is much less likely to be damaged.
- Namrog84 10y ago
  I never use car-sharing simply due to locality. More specifically, the pick up/dropoff points are always just slightly out of the way, I'd have no problem with car sharing if improved locality was a thing. Which would be easily solvable with self-driving cars, coming right up to my curb.
codecamper 10y ago
Let's hope they are electric. Because self driving cars will obviously make single person in a car transit cheap. And therefore cities will be chock-a-full of these things. I think there should be a law that these cars are no bigger than a Fiat 500 (a little bigger than a bumper car).
- aetherson 10y ago
  Obviously, you are a family man.
  - codecamper 10y ago
    Obviously not. Have you googled Fiat 500? That would have to be one small family, though I have seen two people in one before. These cars are super cute! Tesla market cap now outsizes Fiat. Tesla should buy Fiat immediately.
- elihu 10y ago
  I'm not looking forward to the streets being crowded with zero-occupant vehicles on their way to pick someone up or driving home after dropping someone off, or just circling the block all day because it's cheaper than paying for a parking spot.
  - codecamper 9y ago
    If they are self driving you can just step in front of them & they stop, right?
- incompatible 10y ago
  For one or two people, a car like an Elio would often be large enough, basically a motorized tricycle with a body. If you are renting the car on demand, you should be able to right-size it.
nether 10y ago
Self-driving, plug-in Tacoma = dream car.
aidenn0 10y ago
Is anybody else worried that a security-vulnerability in a popular family of internet-connected self-driving car could allow a worm that could cause casualties on the order of millions? I mean how many people would die if e.g. every late-model Ford in the US started aiming for pedestrians?
- aetherson 10y ago
  I think that there are a bunch of ways that you could make this very difficult for teenage idiots to manage, and if you're talking well-funded, highly competent state actors, they probably don't want to do terror attacks like this (and if they did, they could probably cause comparable harm today. Always remember how easy it would be to get a few sticks of dynamite into most US trains or subways).
  - beatpanda 10y ago
    Remember that time when a well-funded, highly competent state actor stockpiled vulnerabilities when everyone told them not to and the leaked vulnerabilities nearly brought down an entire national health care system?
  - wfunction 10y ago
    > they could probably cause comparable harm today. Always remember how easy it would be to get a few sticks of dynamite into most US trains or subways That's localized death on the order of thousands at most, not global death of millions like the parent post was suggesting. Still obviously horrifying, but doesn't really compare in terms of the threat.
    - aetherson 10y ago
      Well, one bomb would be, yes. A sufficiently hypothetically scary driverless car attack might manage to do more deaths (though it'd be really hard, even for a state actor). But I think it wouldn't really get to the level of "more capable of causing terror." If you could cause let's say 15,000 deaths by a well-coordinated one-day bombing attack, and 80,000 deaths by a well-coordinated one-day driverless car attack, do those two things actually differentiate themselves in terms of your nation's agenda? I'd think they'd cause more-or-less identical amounts of terror, and the only purpose of such attacks are terror. Ultimately, I don't think it's important. Nobody who's resourced well enough to pull this off is interested in doing it.
harshaw 10y ago
I would like to see a real study that says people are comfortable with level 5 autonomy. When I ask my 40 something friends their response is "no way". And these are engineers. So maybe a generational thing. It's not that there won't be adoption - but to say you will have sea-change style adoption? People who write these reports seem to be ignorant of the diversity of the automobile owning public. Does no one live in suburbia or have kids? The idea of sharing a car just doesn't make sense. it's part home / workshop / storage area. Maybe innovation solves this. Your rental minivan will dump its pod of crap at your house when it drops you off and picks it up when you call it. Yes, if you live in a dense area this stuff makes great sense. But how do you deal with these use cases: 1) Follow behind your kid on halloween 2) Casually drive anywhere and pull over to watch the view. "Alexa - pull over at that little turn off." maybe?
- monk_e_boy 10y ago
  Most people I ask don't really care. We get in taxis, busses, planes, trains all driven by someone else. The underground in mostly automatic. Planes are flown by software. Traffic signals/lights are software driven. If the software is tested then what? We trust the people who test it. Send the self driving car through a driving test. Sure level 5 is hard... but most people don't appreciate that. They assume it's tested and it works most of the time. Most people will jump in the self driving car and whip out a phone and tweet and facebook and enjoy the free time.
- sporkenfang 10y ago
  > Does no one live in suburbia or have kids? The idea of sharing a car just doesn't make sense. it's part home / workshop / storage area. Maybe innovation solves this. Your rental minivan will dump its pod of crap at your house when it drops you off and picks it up when you call it. Ok, so this is in no way a criticism of you or your kids, but having kids doesn't have to mean that (e.g., would you let your kid leave her crayons on the subway? in the public library?). Sure, kids anywhere could occasionally mean kid vomit, but that's what damages fees are for, right? Lots of people, my sister included, have kids and don't even own cars, today, right now.
  - 10y ago
decayofprivacy 10y ago
Ridiculous. I would never allow it. I think that autonomy and freedom triumph in America at the very least (Europe is hopeless)
- lucasmullens 10y ago
  You won't allow what? People to have the right to choose to use a self-driving car? How is that support freedom and autonomy?
soperj 10y ago
>1) Follow behind your kid on halloween Seriously? Fucking walk.
- asn0 10y ago
  Um, there are reasons other than laziness.
  - ThomPete 10y ago
    Such as?
    - Namrog84 10y ago
      Various forms of disabilities, injuries, other conditions that walking isn't great for. Personal: My mom has CRPS and walking around causes a great increase in pain for her(painkillers, even morphine level have almost 0 effect), even being in a car can be very difficult for her, but a vehicle she is able to better position herself than in a wheelchair. She can't drive because of it, but an autonomous car would make it so she could potentially go places (or follow the grand children around at Halloween). Both my parents are in their 60s and 70s and are super excited about level 5 self-driving cars. Random other example: Parent is on crutches from injury, insurance didn't cover wheelchair, or perhaps live in area with poor wheelchair accessibility(bad/no sidewalks). But crutches are too slow to keep up with the kids, they could easily just sit in a self driving car and keep up. But not having to focus on driving and hitting other kids night, can focus on watching their kids and hanging out the window to interact with them.
      - ThomPete 10y ago
        Thats hardly a generalisable argument in this context is it?
      - Namrog84 10y ago
        ThomPete, Sure these aren't necessarily applicable to ALL people, but you asked "such as?" to "Um, there are reasons other than laziness." I gave you at least 2 specifics such as. There are plenty of laziness reasons, but doesn't mean there aren't potential valid reasons besides laziness. I also generalized the "Various forms of disabilities, injuries, other conditions that walking isn't great for." in the beginning. And there are literally tens of millions of Americans that have at least 1 disability (approximately 20 percent of the US population). And lots of other countries like Japan has an aging population which are likely to have various mobility issues. Not including injuries, or potentially other issues. So I would say that is fairly generalizable.
YSFEJ4SWJUVU6 10y ago
I'll believe it when I see it. To me it seems much more believable by that time that kind of cars won't dominate even streets around Google HQ.
frgtpsswrdlame 10y ago
I think it's ridiculous to espouse something like this when we have no real comparison of the safety of self-driving versus human driven cars as they exist right now.
- xbmcuser 10y ago
  Level 5 autonomous driving means driving better than most humans so it automatically means safer.
  - Spivak 10y ago
    Which is a vacuously true statement because level 5 automation is practically defined as being better than human drivers. The problem is that they basically have to perform better than humans in all situations. As soon as someone dies from a crash that a human could have prevented -- like the Tesla that plowed into a semi because it was white and it couldn't distinguish it from the sky -- it's basically game over for consumer trust. If all we care about is safety then total automation is going to be fighting a losing battle against a machine assisted human drivers for a long time.
  - frgtpsswrdlame 10y ago
    Which is why I'm speaking to the current state of self-driving. We should know how safe and unsafe it is and be regularly updated to how it is improving. The fact that there is a hype hurricane around self-driving but no apples to apples comparison to human drivers is a big red flag to me.
- ocdtrekkie 10y ago
  Ah, but making a post like this will get you tons of hype and views on the Internet including from tech news aggregators...
srcmap 10y ago
Since I am not going to be driving it, do I still need car insurance? Shouldn't the company who develop the Self-Driving tech be liable for any accidents/damages its tech might cause? If so, great deal for consumers, but I doubt the developers of the Self-Driving Tech would agree pay for the insurance for everyone
- randyrand 10y ago
  At the end of the day, it doesn't really matter. The car owner will still pay either indirectly or directly. There is no other choice. If the software developer is liable, then the software developers will just include that extra cost upfront when you purchase the self driving software/vehicle, or more likely as a monthly subscription to continue using their software, just like insurance! If the customer is liable, then customers will just purchase separate insurance like we already do. At the end of the day it's pretty much the exact same system. My 2 cents is we should just keep our current system and let people buy insurance from a third party instead of having to go through the software developer.
  - Spivak 10y ago
    It's not just about who pays for the policy, its about all the other insurance things. If your car is 'at fault' in an accident and you weren't driving do your rates go up? What does that even mean?
    - maxerickson 10y ago
      Wouldn't the sensible thing to be to set rates on a per system (and version) basis? It's a really, really uniform pool, especially if you also have geographic risk information.
    - randyrand 9y ago
      I imagine your rate would be the same as everyone that uses your self driving software version. In fact, your rate could go up because other people with your software are getting into accidents? Sounds crazy right? But it makes complete sense. Eventually it'd encourage you to switch to a safer self driving car system, which is good.
ThomPete 10y ago
The real test of self driving cars are place like Mumbai where you are litteraly 6 vehicles on a 2 laned road. These includes cows, motorcycles, electrical rickshaws, normal cars and trucks, plus pedestrians who just walk in between them. The distance is often not more than a couple of inches.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
elihu 10y ago
> And while 40% of the cars in 2030 will still be of the old, internal combustion variety, they'll represent just 5% of the consumer miles driven. > compared to the internal-combustion standard, self-driving EVs will represent, “a 90% decrease in finance costs, an 80% decrease in maintenance costs, a 90% decrease in insurance costs and a 70% decrease in fuel costs.” > Car subscription services will increase utilization of a vehicle from 16,000-32,000 kilometers per year to 160,000 kilometers or more. And that reduces the number of years the car is in service (and thus interest paid on any financing plan) as well as increases the amount of use wrung out of it per year. These seem like wildly optimistic projections based on an assumption that a single self-driving car can take the place of 5-10 conventional vehicles. This could possibly work if commuters don't all need to use those cars at the same time (maybe a wider prevalence of non 9-5 work schedules) or that a substantial portion of autonomous vehicles will be high-occupancy minivans and the vast majority of commuters are willing to carpool with random strangers. I don't expect either of those things to happen. I do think self-driving cars will be successful and widely used, but it's hard to imagine them having a 95% share of passenger miles when there's plenty of manually-driven cars still on the road. > The savings represent some $5600 per consumer per year or $1 trillion in additional disposable income in the U.S. alone by 2030. According to the first thing I found on Google[1], average consumer spending on transportation was about $9503 per year in 2015 (which is a lot higher than I would have guessed. Apparently I'm an outlier). I think it's unrealistic to assume that lower vehicle maintenance and insurance costs are going to be passed on directly to consumers rather than shareholders. I know that's how efficient markets are supposed to work in general when you have multiple competitors, but I'll believe it when I see it. [1] https://www.bls.gov/news.release/cesan.nr0.htm https://www.bls.gov/news.release/cesan.nr0.htm
Animats 10y ago
When self-driving cars take over, traffic will look very different. More like this: [1] [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zm_rlLyelQo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zm_rlLyelQo

23 points by edward 10y ago

Self-driving cars, yes. Car-sharing, probably not. There are many car rental schemes now, but they're a niche market. Zipcar is not going to take over the world.

j2bax 10y ago
Self driving vehicles will make this a lot more accessible since the car can essentially operate like Uber without a driver. Hail a car via App (or schedule) the car picks you up and drops you off where you need to go, and then its on its way to pick up the next person. It doesn't require a human to park the car or find the car to pick it up. Far fewer cars will be needed to move people around efficiently, if all the cars aren't parked at offices all day long and at your home in the evening. If there are just enough cars that you never have to wait more than 1-5 minutes to get a pickup, and its significantly cheaper to share I could definitely see a lot of people forgoing ownership.
- ams6110 10y ago
  Why would you car-share and not just hail a ride when you need one? EVs can't do long road trips so owning one for the occasional vacation isn't much benefit; you'll likely need to rent a gasoline-powered car anyway.
  - marz0 10y ago
    > EVs can't do long road trips It's possible that a car-share would set up a system where you can swap out the battery of the car at a stop and continue driving; similar to stopping at a gas station.
    - ensignavenger 10y ago
      Or even swap cars at a stop if necessary. But long distance travel is getting better all the time in EVs, by 2030, it may not be a big deal to find a charger and get a quick charge every so often.
    - aetherson 10y ago
      Yes, though it's an additional design constraint in the already-heavily-design-constrained space of EVs. Whether it will happen will probably depend heavily on a host of surrounding factors about how much EV technology increases and how much of the transportation market share rides-for-hire increases to.
  - falcor84 10y ago
    >EVs can't do long trips The new Tesla can do 335 miles [0]. That's quite enough for a day's journey in my opinion. [0] http://fortune.com/2017/01/22/tesla-long-range-electric-car/ http://fortune.com/2017/01/22/tesla-long-range-electric-car/
    - YSFEJ4SWJUVU6 10y ago
      Under ideal – and often somewhat uncomfortable – conditions, perhaps. Anyway, range anxiety is a real thing, and 335 miles won't cut it unless you can charge it like you can fill up a traditional car (which you can't do), although 335 miles sure takes a lot more time when driving at a speed that Tesla gets it without a recharge.
    - maxerickson 10y ago
      It's plenty long enough to be stuck in a car but kind of a bummer to have 100 miles left.
    - ams6110 10y ago
      My limit is more like 700 miles. I'll easily drive 12 or 14 hours with only fuel stops. I used to do 1,000 miles to Florida non stop for spring break. I don't do that anymore but know people who do.
  - Gustomaximus 10y ago
    What about faster charge tech? While infrastructure and technology improve, people will likely time breaks like lunch around charge when doing these kind of trips. E.g 350 kms in the morning, have a 90% charge over lunch. Another 300kms. Have a 15 min coffee for an extra 50% charge that takes you through to dinner charge if you want to keep going. Thats a bunch of kms. And batteries/range will probably be even better than that 10 years from now.
- Animats 10y ago
  "Due to high traffic volume, your car will arrive in 92 minutes. Would you like to upgrade to Premium Service?"
KevanM 10y ago
I don't know - why do you need to own a car 100% of the time? Why not have a car drive to pick you up for your commute maybe with someone else heading your way - then it goes about and picks up people who are heading to the shops, have doctor's appointments, are heading to the airport. You might even part-own that car - you get priority on your travelling hours - and the lease company does a daily valet before the car comes to pick you up.
- wtvanhest 10y ago
  Everyone basically needs their cars at the same time. They all need them to commute. Not owning one will mean ride sharing or extremely high prices. My guess is that people will continue owning their cars forever.
- takk309 10y ago
  An example for full time ownership is chaining trips together. If I am planning to go to multiple stores over the course of the day (one before work, two at lunch, and one after), I don't want to have to load and unload my purchases each time I have to get a different car. Or if I plan to do an activity after work that requires lots of equipment home is not along the way, I will bring the gear with and leave it in my car for the day. These are just two examples from my own life but I am sure there are other reasons to own a private car.
  - chii 10y ago
    It could be a time based rental, rather than trip based. If you think you'll need it for several trips, you should have the option to do that, rather than having to swap cars between trips.
    - aetherson 10y ago
      To the extent that that's cheap, you'll see the utilization of the rental cars go down. To the extent that it's not cheap, why are people using this service? There is some kind of happy-ish medium there, but it's another chip away at the claims of the omnipresence of rides-for-hire.
takk309 10y ago
I think car sharing will be very regional. Areas that are rural will not see the same level of car sharing as urban areas. Many rural people are too used to the freedom of personal car ownership to give it up.
- aetherson 10y ago
  And, you know, they don't work as well in lower-population-density places.
incompatible 10y ago
Much of the cost of renting a car now is insurance. If the car can drive itself, it could be quite a bit cheaper.
- chii 10y ago
  Why would the insurance change, unless you're assuming the self driving car is much safer?
  - incompatible 10y ago
    Yeah, I'm assuming the self driving car is much less likely to be damaged.
Namrog84 10y ago
I never use car-sharing simply due to locality. More specifically, the pick up/dropoff points are always just slightly out of the way, I'd have no problem with car sharing if improved locality was a thing. Which would be easily solvable with self-driving cars, coming right up to my curb.

codecamper 10y ago

Let's hope they are electric. Because self driving cars will obviously make single person in a car transit cheap. And therefore cities will be chock-a-full of these things. I think there should be a law that these cars are no bigger than a Fiat 500 (a little bigger than a bumper car).

aetherson 10y ago
Obviously, you are a family man.
- codecamper 10y ago
  Obviously not. Have you googled Fiat 500? That would have to be one small family, though I have seen two people in one before. These cars are super cute! Tesla market cap now outsizes Fiat. Tesla should buy Fiat immediately.
elihu 10y ago
I'm not looking forward to the streets being crowded with zero-occupant vehicles on their way to pick someone up or driving home after dropping someone off, or just circling the block all day because it's cheaper than paying for a parking spot.
- codecamper 9y ago
  If they are self driving you can just step in front of them & they stop, right?
incompatible 10y ago
For one or two people, a car like an Elio would often be large enough, basically a motorized tricycle with a body. If you are renting the car on demand, you should be able to right-size it.

nether 10y ago

Self-driving, plug-in Tacoma = dream car.

aidenn0 10y ago

Is anybody else worried that a security-vulnerability in a popular family of internet-connected self-driving car could allow a worm that could cause casualties on the order of millions? I mean how many people would die if e.g. every late-model Ford in the US started aiming for pedestrians?

aetherson 10y ago
I think that there are a bunch of ways that you could make this very difficult for teenage idiots to manage, and if you're talking well-funded, highly competent state actors, they probably don't want to do terror attacks like this (and if they did, they could probably cause comparable harm today. Always remember how easy it would be to get a few sticks of dynamite into most US trains or subways).
- beatpanda 10y ago
  Remember that time when a well-funded, highly competent state actor stockpiled vulnerabilities when everyone told them not to and the leaked vulnerabilities nearly brought down an entire national health care system?
- wfunction 10y ago
  > they could probably cause comparable harm today. Always remember how easy it would be to get a few sticks of dynamite into most US trains or subways That's localized death on the order of thousands at most, not global death of millions like the parent post was suggesting. Still obviously horrifying, but doesn't really compare in terms of the threat.
  - aetherson 10y ago
    Well, one bomb would be, yes. A sufficiently hypothetically scary driverless car attack might manage to do more deaths (though it'd be really hard, even for a state actor). But I think it wouldn't really get to the level of "more capable of causing terror." If you could cause let's say 15,000 deaths by a well-coordinated one-day bombing attack, and 80,000 deaths by a well-coordinated one-day driverless car attack, do those two things actually differentiate themselves in terms of your nation's agenda? I'd think they'd cause more-or-less identical amounts of terror, and the only purpose of such attacks are terror. Ultimately, I don't think it's important. Nobody who's resourced well enough to pull this off is interested in doing it.

harshaw 10y ago

I would like to see a real study that says people are comfortable with level 5 autonomy. When I ask my 40 something friends their response is "no way". And these are engineers. So maybe a generational thing. It's not that there won't be adoption - but to say you will have sea-change style adoption? People who write these reports seem to be ignorant of the diversity of the automobile owning public. Does no one live in suburbia or have kids? The idea of sharing a car just doesn't make sense. it's part home / workshop / storage area. Maybe innovation solves this. Your rental minivan will dump its pod of crap at your house when it drops you off and picks it up when you call it. Yes, if you live in a dense area this stuff makes great sense. But how do you deal with these use cases: 1) Follow behind your kid on halloween 2) Casually drive anywhere and pull over to watch the view. "Alexa - pull over at that little turn off." maybe?

monk_e_boy 10y ago
Most people I ask don't really care. We get in taxis, busses, planes, trains all driven by someone else. The underground in mostly automatic. Planes are flown by software. Traffic signals/lights are software driven. If the software is tested then what? We trust the people who test it. Send the self driving car through a driving test. Sure level 5 is hard... but most people don't appreciate that. They assume it's tested and it works most of the time. Most people will jump in the self driving car and whip out a phone and tweet and facebook and enjoy the free time.
sporkenfang 10y ago
> Does no one live in suburbia or have kids? The idea of sharing a car just doesn't make sense. it's part home / workshop / storage area. Maybe innovation solves this. Your rental minivan will dump its pod of crap at your house when it drops you off and picks it up when you call it. Ok, so this is in no way a criticism of you or your kids, but having kids doesn't have to mean that (e.g., would you let your kid leave her crayons on the subway? in the public library?). Sure, kids anywhere could occasionally mean kid vomit, but that's what damages fees are for, right? Lots of people, my sister included, have kids and don't even own cars, today, right now.
- 10y ago

decayofprivacy 10y ago

Ridiculous. I would never allow it. I think that autonomy and freedom triumph in America at the very least (Europe is hopeless)

lucasmullens 10y ago
You won't allow what? People to have the right to choose to use a self-driving car? How is that support freedom and autonomy?

soperj 10y ago

>1) Follow behind your kid on halloween Seriously? Fucking walk.

asn0 10y ago
Um, there are reasons other than laziness.
- ThomPete 10y ago
  Such as?
  - Namrog84 10y ago
    Various forms of disabilities, injuries, other conditions that walking isn't great for. Personal: My mom has CRPS and walking around causes a great increase in pain for her(painkillers, even morphine level have almost 0 effect), even being in a car can be very difficult for her, but a vehicle she is able to better position herself than in a wheelchair. She can't drive because of it, but an autonomous car would make it so she could potentially go places (or follow the grand children around at Halloween). Both my parents are in their 60s and 70s and are super excited about level 5 self-driving cars. Random other example: Parent is on crutches from injury, insurance didn't cover wheelchair, or perhaps live in area with poor wheelchair accessibility(bad/no sidewalks). But crutches are too slow to keep up with the kids, they could easily just sit in a self driving car and keep up. But not having to focus on driving and hitting other kids night, can focus on watching their kids and hanging out the window to interact with them.
    - ThomPete 10y ago
      Thats hardly a generalisable argument in this context is it?
    - Namrog84 10y ago
      ThomPete, Sure these aren't necessarily applicable to ALL people, but you asked "such as?" to "Um, there are reasons other than laziness." I gave you at least 2 specifics such as. There are plenty of laziness reasons, but doesn't mean there aren't potential valid reasons besides laziness. I also generalized the "Various forms of disabilities, injuries, other conditions that walking isn't great for." in the beginning. And there are literally tens of millions of Americans that have at least 1 disability (approximately 20 percent of the US population). And lots of other countries like Japan has an aging population which are likely to have various mobility issues. Not including injuries, or potentially other issues. So I would say that is fairly generalizable.

YSFEJ4SWJUVU6 10y ago

I'll believe it when I see it. To me it seems much more believable by that time that kind of cars won't dominate even streets around Google HQ.

frgtpsswrdlame 10y ago

I think it's ridiculous to espouse something like this when we have no real comparison of the safety of self-driving versus human driven cars as they exist right now.

xbmcuser 10y ago
Level 5 autonomous driving means driving better than most humans so it automatically means safer.
- Spivak 10y ago
  Which is a vacuously true statement because level 5 automation is practically defined as being better than human drivers. The problem is that they basically have to perform better than humans in all situations. As soon as someone dies from a crash that a human could have prevented -- like the Tesla that plowed into a semi because it was white and it couldn't distinguish it from the sky -- it's basically game over for consumer trust. If all we care about is safety then total automation is going to be fighting a losing battle against a machine assisted human drivers for a long time.
- frgtpsswrdlame 10y ago
  Which is why I'm speaking to the current state of self-driving. We should know how safe and unsafe it is and be regularly updated to how it is improving. The fact that there is a hype hurricane around self-driving but no apples to apples comparison to human drivers is a big red flag to me.
ocdtrekkie 10y ago
Ah, but making a post like this will get you tons of hype and views on the Internet including from tech news aggregators...

srcmap 10y ago

Since I am not going to be driving it, do I still need car insurance? Shouldn't the company who develop the Self-Driving tech be liable for any accidents/damages its tech might cause? If so, great deal for consumers, but I doubt the developers of the Self-Driving Tech would agree pay for the insurance for everyone

randyrand 10y ago
At the end of the day, it doesn't really matter. The car owner will still pay either indirectly or directly. There is no other choice. If the software developer is liable, then the software developers will just include that extra cost upfront when you purchase the self driving software/vehicle, or more likely as a monthly subscription to continue using their software, just like insurance! If the customer is liable, then customers will just purchase separate insurance like we already do. At the end of the day it's pretty much the exact same system. My 2 cents is we should just keep our current system and let people buy insurance from a third party instead of having to go through the software developer.
- Spivak 10y ago
  It's not just about who pays for the policy, its about all the other insurance things. If your car is 'at fault' in an accident and you weren't driving do your rates go up? What does that even mean?
  - maxerickson 10y ago
    Wouldn't the sensible thing to be to set rates on a per system (and version) basis? It's a really, really uniform pool, especially if you also have geographic risk information.
  - randyrand 9y ago
    I imagine your rate would be the same as everyone that uses your self driving software version. In fact, your rate could go up because other people with your software are getting into accidents? Sounds crazy right? But it makes complete sense. Eventually it'd encourage you to switch to a safer self driving car system, which is good.

ThomPete 10y ago

The real test of self driving cars are place like Mumbai where you are litteraly 6 vehicles on a 2 laned road. These includes cows, motorcycles, electrical rickshaws, normal cars and trucks, plus pedestrians who just walk in between them. The distance is often not more than a couple of inches.

deleted 10y ago
[deleted]

elihu 10y ago

> And while 40% of the cars in 2030 will still be of the old, internal combustion variety, they'll represent just 5% of the consumer miles driven. > compared to the internal-combustion standard, self-driving EVs will represent, “a 90% decrease in finance costs, an 80% decrease in maintenance costs, a 90% decrease in insurance costs and a 70% decrease in fuel costs.” > Car subscription services will increase utilization of a vehicle from 16,000-32,000 kilometers per year to 160,000 kilometers or more. And that reduces the number of years the car is in service (and thus interest paid on any financing plan) as well as increases the amount of use wrung out of it per year. These seem like wildly optimistic projections based on an assumption that a single self-driving car can take the place of 5-10 conventional vehicles. This could possibly work if commuters don't all need to use those cars at the same time (maybe a wider prevalence of non 9-5 work schedules) or that a substantial portion of autonomous vehicles will be high-occupancy minivans and the vast majority of commuters are willing to carpool with random strangers. I don't expect either of those things to happen. I do think self-driving cars will be successful and widely used, but it's hard to imagine them having a 95% share of passenger miles when there's plenty of manually-driven cars still on the road. > The savings represent some $5600 per consumer per year or $1 trillion in additional disposable income in the U.S. alone by 2030. According to the first thing I found on Google[1], average consumer spending on transportation was about $9503 per year in 2015 (which is a lot higher than I would have guessed. Apparently I'm an outlier). I think it's unrealistic to assume that lower vehicle maintenance and insurance costs are going to be passed on directly to consumers rather than shareholders. I know that's how efficient markets are supposed to work in general when you have multiple competitors, but I'll believe it when I see it. [1] https://www.bls.gov/news.release/cesan.nr0.htm https://www.bls.gov/news.release/cesan.nr0.htm

Animats 10y ago

When self-driving cars take over, traffic will look very different. More like this: [1] [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zm_rlLyelQo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zm_rlLyelQo